NEW ZEALAND WOMEN.

Waikato Argus, Volume II, Issue 149, 19 June 1897, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEW ZEALAND WOMEN.

The experiment of women's suffrage which has been tried in Is ew Zealand does not seem (writes tho London Globe) to have brought about the Millennium, after all. In these blessed islands, woman have had tho vote for four years and have taken part in two general elections, with tho result that things are vor}' much as they were. At the first election, temperance and good moral character were qualifications without which it appeared that the world could not possibly got on, and the socialise reformers fancied a fine time was coming for them, hut tho good ladies at the second general election turned right round, and. according to the best authorities, voted for exactly those things against which they had voted three years before. Tho Prohibition voters fell off enormously, aud the licensed victuallers must havo .von over a large number of ladies who formerly opposed them. Moreover, says Sir Robert Stout, tome me.nbers were returned to tho House whose characters for sobriety do not stand high, and women w:-ro found supporting them just as much as men. The truth is that tho women were at first captured by the faddists and extremists, but they wearied of them in tho course of nature, and now have, like tho rest of humanity, fallen into lino with tho great parties in the country, one section being as violent for tho .Ayes as tbo other is for the Noes, 'this is as it should be. It would have been nothing less than a disaster had the women and tlio feisiniue mates formed a solid party to dominate the State, and institute a reign of rampant rubbish. After the first ecstasies of recording the vote havo passed, tho women have done as their husbands and brothers do, and tho hopes and fears which their entry into politics excited have not como true. And, therefore, wc in England may as well leave things as they are.